Batman writer Tom King tweeted on Saturday that he believed that Batman's listed creators should extend beyond Bob Kane and Bill Finger and include those later writers who helped define how we see the character today.
King was responding to TNT's official Twitter account, which is having a "Bat-Week," and wanted to hear what controversial opinions people have about Batman. King named Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams, Steve Englehart, Marshall Rogers and Frank Miller as the five comic book writers and artists that he would add to Batman's creators.
The writer believes that those five writers and artists, "At this point their contributions to who "Batman" is equal and maybe surpass Kane/Finger."
Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams worked together on a number of Batman stories in the early 1970s. It was during this period, under editor Julius Schwartz, that the decision was made to bring a darker edge to Batman that had been missing in the character since the campy 1960s Batman TV series became the most popular version of the hero. The move to a darker Batman had actually begun in the late 1960s, but O'Neil and Adams certainly popularized the concept.
Adams' version of Batman's costume, with the long cape and the extended fins on his gloves, became the definitive design of Batman for the next few decades.
O'Neil and Adams also revamped Batman's Rogues for the modern era, like Joker and Two-Face, as well as introducing a classic new villain, Ra's al Ghul.
Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers' initial run together on Detective Comics in the mid-1970s was relatively brief, but what was intended at the time to be Englehart's farewell to comics became a highly influential storyline that greatly influenced the 1989 Batman film.
Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns was a massive success in 1986 and it became an influence over all later Batman stories, including the aforementioned 1989 Batman film (plus Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy and Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which included specific imagery from Dark Knight Returns in the film.
Miller's Batman: Year One, with artist David Mazzuchelli, rebooted the character post-Crisis on Infinite Earths. Christopher Nolan used Year One as the framework for Nolan's Batman Begins.
It is not unheard of for later creators to get a "created by" credit, as Jamie Delano and John Ridgway were later given creator credit for John Constantine due to their work on the character at the start of the Hellblazer series.